Polenta Cake with Summer Strawberries
This polenta cake with tender texture and summer strawberries is a great cake for snacking, or even for an indulgent breakfast or brunch. It has a hearty, rustic texture due to the cornmeal and ground almonds and is topped with fresh strawberries and whipped cream.
This simple rustic Polenta cake recipe is a keeper, its so easy and makes a great dessert option for Memorial Day holiday or any other family gatherings. Did I tell you, its gluten free?
It’s a lovely light cake that is not too sweet and you can swap and use any other summer fruits or berries, I am thinking blueberries, raspberries etc. You can add the berries while baking or top it off the way I have done.
Apparently, made with simple easy to available ingredients, butter, sugar, eggs, almond meal, cornmeal, salt and baking powder. It’s topped off with luscious creamy whipped cream that is ever so slightly sweetened and topped off with macerated strawberries.
This cake is famous in Italy and it made with different corn meal from finer to coarser variety. The texture is not like a typical cake. It is slightly grainy. Because of that some people either appreciate or they don’t.
Difference between corn meal and corn flour?
Polenta, also known as cornmeal. It is coarsely ground dried corn. It is what gives polenta cake its signature texture. The difference between baking with very fine cornmeal (cornflour) and coarse cornmeal ultimately comes down to texture. Cornmeal is ground from dried corn, and it has different texture form fine to coarse. I have used fine cornmeal which corn flour.
Polenta is a dish, and cornmeal is an ingredient. Polenta is made with coarse cornmeal. I hope this helps in understanding the main ingredient. Cornstarch and corn flour are not the same. So, they are not interchangeable. Remember this fact.
This cake works great as a plain tea cake or snack.
You can simply dust it with powdered sugar and serve it with fruits.
You can make sugar glaze.
Serve it with mascarpone cheese or crème fraiche.
Polenta Cake with Summer Strawberries
Ingredients
- 125 grams butter
- 100 grams sugar
- 2 eggs room temperature
- 55 grams fine cornmeal or polenta
- 110 grams almond meal/flour
- 3 grams baking powder
- 1 gram salt optional
- ½ cup heavy whipping cream
- 1 tbsp confectioner’s sugar
- 1- pint strawberries
- Pistachios to garnish
Instructions
- Pre heat oven at 350 F. Grease and line 8-inch baking pan with butter and parchment paper.
- Whisk dry ingredients, including cornmeal, almond meal, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl.
- Beat butter and sugar in a kitchen aid mixer or mixing bowl with hand mixer. Once it is creamy and light add eggs one at a time until it is incorporated well.
- Then fold in the dry ingredients. Transfer the cake batter to a lined and greased cake pan and bake about 35- 40 minutes or until its done.
- Once the cake comes out of the oven, let it cool down on a wire rack and make whipped cream. Remove the cake and add whipped cream and top it off macerated strawberries. Garnish with pistachios and edible flowers if you like.
- To macerate strawberries- add ½ tbsp sugar with chopped strawberries and let it sit for some time. It will release some juices and water.